Each major Western Orientalist projected his own chosen weakness onto Islam.

Evidence

A very valuable and intelligent study of Orientalism—Jacques Waardenburg’s L’Islam dans le miroir de l’Occident—examines five important experts as makers of an image of Islam. Waardenburg’s mirror-image metaphor for late-nineteenthand early-twentieth-century Orientalism is apt. In the work of each of his eminent Orientalists there is a highly tendentious—in four cases out of the five, even hostile—vision of Islam, as if each man saw Islam as a reflection of his own chosen weakness. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 520

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 520
• XREF: connects to: Saied frames Arab division and cultural weakness as Western-plotted conspiracies. — Youssef Cherif, Neo-pan-Arabism: a renewed contract of…, 98